Life Afterlife

afterlife is a TV series about a woman called Alison who sees dead people and the reaction she gets from the outside world – news media, psychologists, ex wives, ex friends and anyone who is trying to cope with the demands made on them.

The ghosts appear as solid living people.  They have strength and power and yet their existence is denied.  Why? Who is it that keeps the ghosts alive? Mostly the deniers who want to impress their rationality on the world, who vehemently insist that ghosts do not exist because they can’t see them – therefore all mediums are frauds.

At one point the main character was institutionalized because of a mental illness which we don’t get to know  beyond the various standard labels fought over by the reigning experts.  There Alison was tortured in the way patients are usually tortured by living in the sanitized ward where they are not entitled to own their knowledge. Alison is a victim, marginalized, unable to get on with creating peace in her life. Accosted by people suffering from grief, hated by strangers who accuse without knowing her, and the dead people who need to get a message to their loved ones.

The last episode I watched begins with a man who suffocates his lover in their bed which Alison gets to know about through a woman who knocks on Alison’s door seeking help. She begs for Alison’s help. Out of compassion Alison stays at the apartment and experiences the death of the murdered woman.  The psychologist who is studying Alison for a book on psychic-phenomena, and who wants to protect her while inserting his own theory on everything she says, goes with her and sees the murderous ghost.  Only he doesn’t suffer the symptom of being suffocated – he just witnesses it.

There is a scene before the murder where you hear the man instruct the woman not to turn on the radio, talk to anyone outside the apartment, or to make a sound within. In effect she is to be invisible, inaudible, not real.  She is not to exist.

The psychologist, Robert, who is haunted by the presence of his dead son, denies any of the phenomena he felt at the spooked apartment, explaining it in terms of his psychological reasoning.

After the death of his young son, Robert is frozen in guilt and sorrow, his wife leaves, marries someone else and is now pregnant. She feels betrayed by Robert’s interest in Alison and demands that he cut ties with her. She accuses him of betraying the memory of their dead son. 

The story is filled with characters making demands on others.  Demanding they see the world as they do.

After Alison insists that the woman (who sought her out) should  leave the apartment immediately because her life is in danger, a centre-fold news article reveals the true identity of the woman. She is a journalist who assumed another name. The journalist “proved” Alison is a fraud because she created the haunting story. Again Alison finds herself betrayed, under attack, alone and reviled.

At the end of the episode the ghosts re-enter the vacant apartment claiming victory that they have returned to this beautiful place that no-one wants because it is haunted.

Whether ghosts are real or not, or whether we create ghosts, or ghosts are created to keep us afraid of the unknown is never answered. But I suspect this series is mostly about the loneliness of people who live in a culture built on ideologies and experts and who find themselves alone because the world demands adherence yet does not listen to them.  We live in a nattering, chattering age, calling forth the Shrew and taming her, replaying Othello and his Iago, creating the new Hitler and Stalin, calling those who see the world differently – idiots and frauds. 

Why does our culture in this post-modern world insist on trying to prove the existence or non-existence of phenomena? What does the journalist have to gain?  What does the ex wife have to gain? What does the psychologist have to gain? And what do the ghosts gain?

Review - Refugees Welcome: poems in a time of crisis

Refugees Welcome – poems in a time of crisis. Edited by Oliver Jones. Eyewear: 20/20 special edition (2015) www.eyewearpublishing.com.

“We like the idea of the South. / Until it knocks on our door.” (Rishi Dastidar) This is the first stanza of the first poem in this small and powerful anthology.

Poems take risks, make generalizations, in order to get to the defining element of psycho/social reality. Politics assumes it speaks on behalf of the nation it claims to serve. But who does it really serve? That is the question for the poem.

Who is served when we take in refugees or immigrants? While we tend to think of them as the other, the other knows we are the privileged, who can, in the comfort of our living rooms or office debate the issue as though it is an abstract, rather than life or death.

Thomas McColl imagines the dreams of those who have nothing else to claim … “eyelids turned into wings … above and across the barbed wire”. The vulnerability of life without walls and insurance policies is captured in Kate Noakes observation between “Black black rocks / oily with dawn / an early lamb”, reminding us how fragile our bodies are when most of us work so hard to surround ourselves with symbols of security. But refugees, war, prejudice and corporate power enter the village like “A limp rag doll, washed up on the kitchen table” (Angela T. Carr).

Sophia-Louise Hyde asks us to mind the gap between “#indifferent” and “#hope”. Devices like social media almost parenthesize civilization as we live it from day to day. Media says if it bleeds it leads but the instrument doesn’t weep, and we do even though we try not to admit it.

“Our humanity diminished” writes Adele Fraser, where “the sea, cold, unconscious, welcomed where we did not.” Civilization is much more than the economy, it is about being human and living from a human consciousness. The poet reminds us that we are entering into madness when we fail to remember who we are. Metaphor is a short cut to do that. “There is a place where the wing tears.” writes Margo Berdeshevsky. Civilization has enabled us to fly and to believe it is our individual egos that created that.

Much of corporate media feeds into the myth that we are superior because of what we have and to leave out the part of how we arrived here. George Symonds closes his poem with “Papers, papers, everywhere / And not a word believed.” So if our own creations are no longer believed what is left? Compassion?

Sally Flint confesses to have “held children who died when taken / by illness who no medic could save. / But someone could have helped” Aylen Kurdi, the 3 year old toddler found washed up by the tide.

It’s not enough to know that the instruments of power have destroyed civilizations many times before. We need to ask how those instruments work to make us less human, to oppress the spirit for the glorification of power over life. We need to see our own children in the ones who have been sacrificed for constructed goals. We need to stop making excuses for ourselves. While preaching closes the mind and the book, the image persists.

In this book there are forty pages of images that will waft into your mind and heart, to consider the link between the value of your life, and where that value comes from.

Other poets in this book are Zena Hashem Beck, Andrew Oldham, Ellen Davies, Antony Owen, Jim C Mackintosh, Rosemary Appleton, Emma Lee, Monica Corish, Janet Vickers, Kathleen Bell, Frank Dullaghan, and Colleen Sensier.

Rape Culture

Sleeping Lion

With the current focus on the Ghomeshi trial and the way victims are being branded through the courts, it would be logical to believe that choking and penetrating someone is far more violent, far more guilty than smiling and being nice.  But in rape culture the purpose of everything is to normalize rape as a way of being. To make every living entity a victim or a conqueror. In rape culture it's far more shameful to be a victim.

We are sent to the forum as gladiators whether we want to be or not. We learn that in order to win, somebody must lose. Everything on the earth is here for the purpose of being conquered by the glorious conqueror.

It's not that we are inherently evil or good.  It is that we have been, through the experiences of our ancestors, traumatized.  We have learned how to hide who we are in order to survive.  We have learned how to entertain ourselves with games that we might win so we don't address the depth and breadth of this oppression.

So it comes down to this - am I the rapist or the raped? Am I the winner or the loser? Am I the user or the used? Will I challenge what I know is wrong or recede behind the door of my home - the only sanctuary where I am allowed to be me. Will I lock those doors so no-one can get in?  Will I allow my children to enter school and the work place to be psychologically raped every time they are compared with sluts, idiots or monsters? Will I learn how to be well adjusted in this world, or if not entirely adjusted, will I survive?

The proof of this rape culture, this acceptance of violence as normal human behaviour, is the way the legal system works and media's acquiescence to power. It is not the rapist that is on trial, examined and interrogated, who must prove he is innocent, but the victim who must prove they never uttered a word, stood, sat, smiled or fluttered in any way that could be perceived as "a come on".

The purpose of rape culture is to blame the victim, to heave contempt on the tender shoots of life, and to turn innocence into powerlessness, to brutalize every diverse expression of life into silence or submission.

Cultures of rape see women as walking wombs, walking threats to man made power. Cultures of rape see men as instruments to serve the system - soldiers, CEO's, policeman, drivers, strategists - they must serve without question - and those who do question will be crucified and forgotten. Human nature is the menace and it must be reduced, ridiculed and discouraged. Misogyny will end when science has created the means to make eggs and sperm in a lab without using what nature has created.

This is the world of psychopaths who have made themselves slaves to the system so that ultimately they might make the world a playground for their egos.

This lion of justice is sleeping. Rape is not about the minds and hearts of men and women at all.  It's about the absolute triumph of the system with all its purchased institutions, over the whole of nature.

Why Are We So Angry?

Here are some answers to that question.

The breakdown in civil society means we must make personal decisions in public when we are not sure what is right, or what seems right is more dangerous than is apparent at the moment.

Driving on a two lane country road that is narrow and curved, a driver ahead of me had stopped for a few seconds. I just waited. After a few seconds the driver moved forward and stopped again. Because of the curve I couldn't safely overtake them so I waited, congratulating myself on being patient. Then the driver started backing up quite fast, so I backed up, then they made a left turn down a narrow road.

Afterward I was impressed with the sense of entitlement shown by this driver for not indicating via lights or signals what they needed to do, or for doing the safe thing and driving forward until the next turn off where they could have turned back in the right lane to make the turn they missed. The driver appeared to expect or hope that I would accommodate their needs.

Later I realized I was complicit in this dangerous driving - it could have been a mess if another had driven up around the corner as I was backing up. Later still I realized I didn't know what to do at that moment. Should I have just remained in that spot refusing to move back, honked my horn, got out of the car? There is something about being in a vehicle which makes us isolated in our decisions. In a fraction of a second we can destroy lives even if we don't want to.

Later I felt angry - not so much at that particular driver, but because I didn't know what the right thing to do was. It's easy to dismiss any social or safety discomfort as being someone else's fault. Blaming is even encouraged in hierarchical societies as long as we blame those on the bottom of the power spectrum.

We see so many big problems and grave dangers to our future, that billions of isolated egos can't seem to fix. Nevertheless there is an undercurrent of outrage and disappointment when the mind becomes aware of the broad scope of injustice which is mostly felt when a child starts looking beyond the immediate family to the larger society.


Ann Jones, in her article "After I lived in Norway America Felt Backward Here's Why" relates her experience of being a journalist in Afghanistan then travelling to Norway and returning home to America. What she finds is this:

"I had, in fact, come back to the flip side of Afghanistan and Iraq: to what America’s wars have done to America. Where I live now, in the homeland, there are not enough shelters for the homeless. Most people are either overworked or hurting for jobs; the housing is overpriced, the hospitals crowded and understaffed, the schools largely segregated and not so good. Opioid or heroin overdose is a popular form of death, and men in the street threaten women wearing hijabs. Did the American soldiers I covered in Afghanistan know they were fighting for this?"

I include this here to compare the small experiences of learning how to live with one another peacefully, with the results of centralized power that destroy millions of lives through war and neglect. For centuries marauding tribes has destroyed the civil societies they conquer and proceed to replace what might be intelligent behaviour with trauma and chaos. Here we are either exploitable resources or refugees.

Now hate groups are flourishing with their malevolent prescriptions that deflect the real causes more fear and hatred.

Enter Into Compassion

There are two doors. The one on the left has the sign TWTWW. The one on the right says Compassion.

The left door stands for The Way The World Works.  If you enter that you will find it’s crowded with people arguing.  They are researchers who have done their homework. Their papers are annotated with long bibliographies to support their theories. They are passionately arguing about the reasons and the causes of the world’s problems. Each invested in their own particular view because they have so much proof to back up their argument. Yet they can’t get everyone to agree.

The right door marked Compassion is eerily quiet. There are 2 rows of beds, most of them filled with people who seem to be near death. As you walk quietly through this room you realize it is a sterilized palliative care ward with white sheets and walls, and no sign of nursing staff. 

You decide to walk through the aisle. You see a woman, thin and pale. She is someone you love and she doesn’t know you are there. You softly say hello and there is no response. You say her name and she turns to you and smiles. You ask her if she remembers you and her eyes close as if to return to sleep.  You tell her you are here to help. You list all the therapies available that might cure her of the disease she is dying from. 

You are beginning to feel a panic rise from your stomach as you wonder if there was anyone there to help her or whether they gave up too soon.  Then a nurse appears and reminds you that this is a hospice. You feel your voice rising to a higher pitch as you interrogate. The friend you love who is dying turns away from you at this point. You are losing her. So you pull up a chair and sit quietly by her bed. Listen to her breathe for awhile, then you begin to sing very quietly:

            May I be filled with loving kindness, may I be well.

            May I be peaceful and at ease, may I be whole.

Then your friend slowly turns toward you, opens her eyes, and manages a feint smile.

            May you be filled with loving kindness, may you be well.

            May you be peaceful and at ease, may you be whole.

Slowly she moves her arm over her body towards the side of the bed where you sit.  You take her hand very gently and you sing

            May we be filled with loving kindness, may we be well.

            May we be peaceful and at ease, may we be whole.

All the muscles in her face relax as she sinks into her last exhalation. You weep silently and eventually leave.

Your heart is heavy and full of sorrow but you feel at peace because you were able to be with her as she left your world. You don’t know why she turned away when you offered to help or why she turned toward you when you sat quietly beside her. You don’t know what advised you to do that but it was clear then that was the right thing to do. Was it your imagination when you felt something was guiding you.  Was it you singing or was it someone else? What made you visit at that time?

There are no answers to your questions. You have no knowledge other than an intuitive pull. All you know is that you were there and you felt honoured to be there.

There have been many times when I was afraid to feel compassion, to express sympathy. Somehow it felt more like an intrusion into another's pain, to satisfy myself that I did something rather than nothing. Would I, through my own ignorance say something that was really harmful or hurtful?

What is compassion anyway? 

My introduction came through child birth. The nervous system reflecting away from myself and into life within and then around me. The first time I held a newborn infant I saw the shape of  responsibility to feel compassion, to keep this creature safe so he will survive.  How would I know how to do that?

  

After this infant opened his eyes and smiled, the realization that I was not the centre of the universe was a whole body awakening. It was a new entry into life, an unaffected being who came through me, revealing a deeper meaning as I rocked him in my arms. His fragile body said forget all that you think you know.

The pregnant body invaded the self-centred ego and reverberated back to the world. I think this is an apt metaphor for all men and women regardless of whether they have children or not, who see their life as being a conduit to new life whether it is a legal document, a piece of art, or a new community.

Wherever our task becomes one of caring for the other, the other becomes part of us. We suspend the judgement and learn to look into another’s eyes and see there what we see rather than what we have been told to see.

All of these eyes have different stories that can merge into a single narrative.  But being available to “thou” is a grounding alternative to “I” as Martin Buber pointed out in his book where “you” become half of what “I” am.  It is a shared responsibility where I neither feel I am to blame if you are not happy, or triumphant if you are. 

The world is with me and not about me, I can be open to what you think and feel and hope for without being an accomplice. I can help you find what you need by getting out of your way, by asking you how I can help.

To simply be with you, to listen and to feel what I feel as I hear your narrative. 

The stories you tell are embedded with layers of suffering and hope. This is how I enter into compassion.  To be with you – your achievements, your moments of disappointment, your grief.

Compassion doesn’t demand style or expertise – it demands presence. Compassion doesn’t ask for advice. It doesn’t ask for a fix. It’s asks for a witness, a friend, a person who hears and sees.

When we enter into compassion we simply have to be there, to get beneath the labels and intellectual constructs. To look into the face of suffering, the eyes of pain, while there, forget the narrative circling our own lives. Forget the economic forecasts, the daily news, and all that we pride ourselves on knowing. Compassion allows us to let down all the flags, all the defenses. It allows us to look into another person’s face and see a unique and indescribable beauty. It allows us a break from that inner critic that keeps feeding back a report on how we are doing.

The folks in the TWTWW room are important. They musn’t stop their research, the annotated bibliographies, their argumentation. Their compassion is invested in a better future for all, but the palliative care ward, the small song, the reaching hand is needed to provide the strength and support to endure.

I close with the words of a young Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank in Day by Day, ed. Chaim Stern (Beacon Press) hiding in an annex from the Nazis.

I can feel the suffering of millions
and yet, if I look up into the heavens,
I think it will all come right,
and that this cruelty too will end,
and that peace and tranquility will return again.
In the meantime,
I must uphold my ideals,
for perhaps the time will come
when I shall be able to carry them out.

The Not Impossible Plan

December 13, 2015,  Don Gayton, a clean energy engineer gave a presentation to the Unitarian Fellowship of Nanaimo about his five-year journey studying and working on potential solutions to climate change and his strong belief that it is not an impossible task to retire fossil fuel use by mid century. 

It was so well received a workshop was given a couple of weeks later.

Zale Dalen was motivated then to create this Video to get Don's message out.  It is brief, easy to understand and inspiring.  Please watch and encourage your friends to view this.

Meet the Cop Who Cut the Murder Rate in Glasgow

Michael Enright of CBC talks to Karyn McCluskey

Karyn McCluskey brought in a program that reduced the murder rate in Glasgow from 71 in 2002 to 14 in 2015.

Her focus was on how to prevent crime by getting involved with families in crisis rather than wait until their youth fall into the habits of crime. The results have been astonishing and yet this has hardly been reported in mainstream media.

Why would that be? Who chooses media policy? Are publishers scared to publish stories about social issues that indicate we have policy options?

McCluskey and Enright focused on causes - the lack of male guidance in the lives of youth at risk, and grinding poverty.